Environment Problem Solution Essay: Vocabulary and Band 9 Sample IELTS

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General Problem Solution IELTS Essay Structure, grammar foundation,

Problem Solution for Advanced, 6+ students who need 7+

Which sentence is the strongest opening sentence for the following?

Prompt: Global warming is one of the biggest threats humans face in the 21st Century, and sea levels continue to rise at alarming rates. 

What problems are associated with this, and what are some possible solutions? 

Opening sentences:
1. Climate change is among the principal dangers facing people this century, and ocean levels are increasing dramatically. 
2. In 2026, climate change remains the most significant environmental challenge, with rising sea levels posing a direct threat to global stability.
3. Rising temperatures globally have caused changes in ocean patters, drought, ecological changes, sea-level rise and extreme weather, and this has led to loss of land, property and access to potable water.
4. The environmental crisis of the 21st Century is dominated by the warming of the planet, which has triggered a rapid increase in oceanic levels.

Critical thinking for IELTS Band 9 Essays

Let me walk you through how I see this so that you can assess the question at a high-level.
My first question is, is the question asking me to address global warming and sea level rise as two separate, but linked problems? I can’t understand why Cambridge Assessments would give one example of global warming when there are many, like water scarcity, high temperatures, extreme weather and so on.
The sentence ‘what problems are associated with ‘this’’ suggests that it’s one thing to address, not two.
This thinking is crucial to make sure we are answering the question fully, and getting our task response marks.
Remember that TR comes BEFORE you write.

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Giving and impactful and band breaking first sentence

our thinking so far will help determine what we write in the first sentence.
It may seem counter-intuitive (illogical or wrong) to question the question, but in academics, the reader will think, ‘ah you are right, there was a problem with the question!’.
So, I am going to write a background sentence that defines the term “global warming” in a better way than the question does.
A standard opening from 95% of students will just repeat the question, but if everyone is doing that and so few get band 8-9, you have to ask yourself why! Well, now you know.
SO…..
I’m actually going to go one step further in the opening, I’m going to mention the problems this causes.
This allows me to go deeper into the topic later on.

”Rising temperatures globally have caused changes in ocean patters, drought, ecological changes, sea-level rise and extreme weather, and this has led to loss of land, property and access to potable water.” (Drinkable water.)

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Structure

Introduction: background + thesis

Body 1: 1 problem and a solution for it

Body 2: 1 problem and a solution for it

Conclusion

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The Strategy that hits all four band descriptors at band 8-9.

Task Response: without paraphrasing, I’ve shown that I not only understand the question but can define it better than the question itself.
Cohesion: I’m going to talk about some of these issues in later paragraphs in more detail. By mentioning them here, I’ve connected my opening sentence to my paragraphs.
Task Response: I’ve already responded to the ‘say what the problems are’ section. I’ll be able to ‘fully develop’ my answer in the paragraphs. (See the education pages for more on how to do this)
Grammar: this is a compound sentence, one of the 7 types you need to use.
Vocabulary: because I’ve listed the situation/types of global warming, and some problems it causes, I’ve been able to put in 3-4 good band 7+ words.

When you know you have done all this in just one sentence, you can start to feel like a competent student.
You can start to relax because you know, for sure, you did your best and your chance of scoring high is high!

Compare this to sentence 1 from IELTS ‘advantage’. You can see the difference clearly now right?
Same goes for 2 and 4 which are AI.

Our sentence in 3 is closer to university-level writing, and it will get you band 8-9.

Try the essay and submit it here.

Academic Note: we call giving details (like we did for climate change) ‘define your terms’. This is one of the most overlooked skills at university, but I assure you it’s never overlooked at Cambridge. Knowing exactly what we are talking about is key to good analysis.

Let’s look at this idea in your daily and business life.

Imagine your friend says “I’m going to date a guy”, and you say “which guy?”. She says “any guy!”
You are probably going to want to ‘define who the guy is’ before you agree that she should date him.
Let’s say someone says “fruit is good for you”. Do you think it’s true?
Actually, a lot of fruit is engineered to be very high in sugar, and some are sprayed with many chemicals. So, we need to know which fruit you are talking about!

Business life:

Imagine that your boss says ‘get a new coffee maker that is the best’. What’s ‘best’? Does it mean ‘fastest, cheapest, fancy looking, filter coffee, makes many types, a paid machine’? Who knows!!!!! You feel frustrated and lose respect for your boss. The same happens if you are not clear with your ideas and what the words you are saying mean.

You give a presentation and say that ‘spending 100000 dollars on a sports figure for the marketing campaign is best’. Someone asks you ‘why’? You need to be ready not only with an answer but a way to explain your reason clearly, so that they can understand and follow you.

That’s where we are going.

And I promise you, at Cambridge, they are incredibly good at this, and you will become too.

You will get to your university in the UK, write your first essay and your tutor will say ‘your ideas are very clearly explained’. BOOM!

Don’t suffer like I did in my first term at Cambridge. I didn’t know that I needed to be so clear and define my terms. I learned in a very embarrassing way in a presentation I gave.

Here’s a huge help for you. Everything you are learning on these pages applies to your speaking test too. Yes. Just do these, this ‘define your terms’ etc and you’ll be way ahead of the competition.

Essay models from AI, IELTS Advantage and Richard Elite

You should be able to assess the depth of the explanation in each paragraph now.

1. AI: The Multi-Dimensional Problem The current environmental trajectory creates a cascade of failures that extend far beyond simple coastal flooding. When the crisis is properly defined, it becomes clear that the primary threat is the destabilization of essential resources, specifically potable water. As rising sea levels lead to saltwater intrusion in freshwater aquifers, the global supply of drinking water is compromised. Furthermore, high temperatures and ecosystem damage are not merely inconveniences; they are drivers of agricultural collapse. The loss of biodiversity and the intensification of environmental disasters—such as wildfires and superstorms—destroy the very infrastructure required for human habitation, making large swaths of the planet effectively uninhabitable.
2. IELTS ADV: The foremost problems caused by climbing sea levels are that land is being lost and peoples’ residences are often flooded. As water levels rise, low-lying land is submerged and many countries become smaller. Furthermore, millions of people all over the world live in coastal areas, and if the sea rises by even a few feet, they are inundated with water and lose their property. The devastation brought about by this was clear for all to see during the 2011 Tsunami in Japan, in which millions of people were displaced.
3. Richard Elite: The problems associated with climate change are essentially ones that make human habitation more challenging. As billions of people live within 1m of sea level, the issues from these changes include extreme weather, ecological changes and sea level rise. These issues damage homes, hurricanes for example, and overpopulate the sea and land with certain species, which can cause damage like destroying marine and plant life which people need to sustain themselves. In order to mitigate these socio-economic impacts, campaigns have been waged to lower carbon emissions to little effect. Alternatively, changing the type of home to a traditional stilt pole home and culling the population of certain species may be a more practical solution.

Commentary on how these are read by IELTS examiners and university tutors.

Notice how the AI version has to define the term climate change in more detail in the paragraph. This eats up space and causes the paragraph, the explanation, to be shallow. We did it in the opening sentence.
Secondly, the AI paragraph lists three problems, none of them in depth. Again, this will produce a low score. Our paragraph has one problem and one solution in more depth we have detailed the 3-4 problems that one issue causes.
In IELTS Advantage, there is an unnecessary amount of explanation for a problem we all understand already. Is it really the case that ‘countries become smaller’? Not really. There is plenty of land. The problem is that people live close to the water. In our paragraph, we have a simple, ready-made solution, the house on poles, which is actually an existing house type.
An even greater problem with IA’s essay is the logic. The paragraph discusses rising sea-level, due to climate change, but then gives the example of a tsunami which is NOT caused by sea level rise, but by tectonic shifts in plates under the sea. The paragraph suddenly loses cohesion and task response marks and is only a band 6.
Finally, notice how I mentioned ‘reducing carbon emissions’ has had little impact. This is because many students will write this, and I’m dismissing it.

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